


between our quests we sequin vests

by bossymarmalade (maggie)



Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Gen, Illustrated, Mind Control, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-12
Updated: 2009-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-03 03:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggie/pseuds/bossymarmalade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you want crazy?  morgana's got your crazy!</p>
            </blockquote>





	between our quests we sequin vests

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to glockgal for the groovy illo!
> 
> standard foreword: if i have written something problematic/oppressive to a marginalized group that you find hurtful, please please please don't think twice about telling me. i will never spew hate at you, will never attack you, and i will always thank you and make the change.

When members of the court at Camelot start to randomly go mad, Morgana isn't surprised. She hasn't slept for what feels like a month, although Gwen says that it's been four nights at the most. The dreams have been coming thick and fast and she wakes up choking every time, scrabbling at her throat, bedclothes wrapped around her feet like vines.

"But what do you _see_ in the dreams?" Merlin asks when Morgana is up in the room that he shares with the Court Physician. "Any particular person? Maybe some sort of creature? Possibly a recognizable location with somebody laughing evilly over a cup or a flower or a scroll?"

"Leave the poor girl alone, Merlin." Gaius casts a stern glare at his charge when he comes back with some sort of virulently blue sleeping tincture for Morgana. "She has enough problems losing sleep without having to lose brain cells trying to answer your questions. Take half of this an hour before you go to bed," he continues, handing over the bottle to Morgana as she and Merlin both try to figure out if they'd been insulted, "and the rest just before you go to sleep."

"Thank you," Morgana says. She spends the rest of the day wandering around the castle trying to remember any of the details of her nightmares, and the most she can come up with is a swirling velvet cloak. As every noble person in Camelot and every noble person across the land owns at least three velvet cloaks in various insane colours, this is not much help.

"If only I could remember something about my dreams," she tells Gwen as she's turning in for the night. She's already fucked up and drunk the whole bottle of Gaius's sleeping potion a half-hour before bed, so she's kind of reeling and Gwen guides her firmly to bed and tucks her in. Once Morgana is asleep Gwen will arrange her hair to prettily fan out across the pillow so it looks nice when Morgana wakes up. These are the kinds of things that people think come naturally to royalty, but in truth it's a number of carefully planned little details.

"Here's what you should do," Gwen says briskly, tucking and fluffing while Morgana's limbs turn to floaty jelly. "When -- _if_," she corrects herself, "-- if you wake up, repeat to yourself right away what happened in your dream. If you say it aloud right away, you might remember."

Which is how Morgana shoots upright in her pitch-black room and screeches, "FILIGREE!!" loud enough to scare the roosters from crowing in dawn's arrival.

...

"I'm only saying," Arthur says, and he looks insufferably pleased with himself in his stupid princeling tiara, "I'm only saying that if you're waking up in the middle of the night screaming about decorative metalsmithing, perhaps it's a career you should look into." He grins around at the courtiers behind him, who as usual don't respond much. It's a tiny blessing.

"As if Arthur knows the first thing about how much skill goes into metalsmithing," Gwen whispers to Merlin, who's come scampering in late, as usual, and chooses to smush up next to Gwen on Morgana's side of the throne room. Merlin gasps a bit and blinks blankly into middle distance. He's pretty enough but Morgana thinks he might be somewhat touched in the head. It would certainly explain why Gaius is so oddly protective over him.

"Arthur's clueless on a lot of things," Merlin finally whispers back. The two of them are louder than they think. It's a good thing they're at Camelot, home of the Courtiers who Mind Their Own Business, or they'd get themselves in a lot of trouble. Morgana tries to shoot them a look to shut up, but then King Uther comes in and she doesn't have to because they both stand straighter and zip it. "What news is there on the madness front?" the King demands, and Arthur steps forward smartly to report, "Three more cases since yesterday." He worries at his bottom lip before adding, "... and our water supply has been tested, and our grain has been tested, and it seems to only be affecting people who live in the castle."

Uther stares at him. "What is your theory, then, Arthur?" he asks. "Since I'm certain you've been searching for the cause instead of waiting around for Gaius's test results or for more people to fall victim to this affliction." Some of the courtiers who are hanging at the back of the crowd take this moment to unobtrusively slip out of the throne room before Arthur collects himself enough to answer. Morgana kind of envies them.

"I, ah ..." Arthur woffles, "you see, I've been taking scouting parties out across the grounds, and, er ... there's no ... that is to say, no _particular_ sign of, um, spoor? Of any sort of unnatural beast, you see, that might be, ah, to blame ...."

Morgana is starting to feel bad for the poor idiot when something hard jabs her in the waist. She slaps at it and Merlin pulls back his poky fingers and hisses urgently, "you should say something! About your dreams!" Morgana turns around to shoot him a death-glare, but Merlin repeats with more insistence, "you could really help, Morgana! Arthur's dying up there!" Well, Merlin is right about that; at the moment, Arthur's spluttering something about following the tracks of a three-legged cow into the next county by accident, and Uther is looking more thunderous by the second.

"Do it," Merlin says. Gwen looks very dubious about the whole thing, but offers, "They are only dreams, the king can hardly think they're magic. Hopefully." And so Morgana steps forward, and just when Arthur finishes in a loud rush, "-- I think it might be sorcery!" Morgana says, "I've been having very strange dreams."

King Uther looks from one, to the other, and Morgana hears a whole bunch more courtiers slip out of the throne room.

...

At least she's prepared for the shackles in the dungeon, this time.

"What in the world is _wrong_ with you?" Arthur wails, pacing up and down in the cell. "You _know_ my father advocates panic as the best course of action when it comes to dealing with magic!"

"I thought it would help," Morgana says tightly. "I didn't count on you opening your fool mouth to start blabbing about oooh, it's hard tracking monsters in the fog and ooooh, maybe it's some sort of craaaaaaazy magic-user."

Arthur stops pacing and comes over to hold Morgana's shoulders, which kind of smarts because it tugs at the shackles but he looks very contrite so Morgana cuts him a break. "I had no idea," he sighs. "My father seems to be less and less reasonable about anything that even smacks of magic these days. I was doing she-loves-me-she-loves-me-not with a daisy over supper and he looked at me as though he suspected me of casting a spell with it." Arthur's sadness over his father's increasing despotism is touching, but Morgana has weathered the dry bread and pungent cheese that constitute prisoner rations before and has no wish to do so again, so she prompts, "any idea how to get me out of here?"

"Step away from the prisoner, sire!" Merlin rushes into the cell and practically wrestles Arthur away, which is easy enough because Arthur's clearly astonished and quickly annoyed. He opens his mouth to bellow something imperious but Merlin pushes against him and whispers frantically into his ear, and Arthur's admonishing stance shifts on an instant. The guards hover just inside the gate of the cell, looking to the prince for instructions; Arthur tells them, "stand aside and let the Court Physician in." As if on cue, Gaius arrives, glaring at the guards as they shuffle aside just enough for him to squeeze into the cell.

"Dark circles about the eyes, lustreless hair, cracked lips, rigid limbs," he rattles off, coming over to prod at Morgana's face and arms. "Tell me, Lady Morgana -- have you had any blackouts? Sections of the day you don't remember?"

"Um," Morgana says. She glances over at Merlin, who nods almost imperceptibly, and although Morgana doesn't know why she'd listen to Merlin about something so important she nonetheless tells Gaius, "Yes." The tenseness in his face releases as well, and he winks broadly at Morgana before turning to Arthur.

"It's almost certainly the madness, m'lord," he informs the prince. "The brain fever would also make Morgana feel as though she's having prophetic dreams. She needs bedrest, not confinement."

Relief sags Arthur's shoulders, but his voice is typically arrogant as he scoffs, "That makes more sense! The idea of Morgana having soothsayer visions of jewelry-making was too absurd to believe." He beckons to the guards and orders, "Turn her free," before stalking out of the cell. Merlin is standing there with that odd distant look on his face again, and he rushes out as well as Gwen comes in to coo and bundle Morgana up in her teal velvet cloak. "They wouldn't let me in until now," Gwen says apologetically. "Your hair does look pretty lustreless, sorry to say, so let's fix that." Gwen manages to brush out and arrange Morgana's hair as they walk so she looks groomed and sleek by the time they reach the castle proper; it's only one of the reasons Gwen makes such a great personal servant.

King Uther comes in to see Morgana as she's taking an invalid's meal in her room. He looks quite abashed and says, "You understand my dilemma." Morgana raises an eyebrow and Uther says, "I couldn't take the chance of it being magic use, even from one so dear to me." Morgana juts out her jaw and raises her nose and Uther adds, "Let me make it up to you, my child -- here, a peace offering of sorts." The King presents a terribly vulgar necklace of fat lacy silver beads and Morgana forces herself to take a sip of wine (displaying her abraded wrists for extra effect) before greedily grabbing it. "I will of course accept your apology, Your Majesty," she says, "despite this being the second time I've suffered wrongful imprisonment." There's nobody who can lay a guilt trip like Morgana can.

Uther gives a tight, sad smile -- the resemblance between him and Arthur is uncanny sometimes -- and is barely out the door before Morgana holds the necklace up with a delighted moue. Gwen smiles indulgently and comes over to clasp it around Morgana's throat; the beads are solid, heavy, and feel wonderful. "You must remember to act more as if you've got the mad sickness," Gwen reminds Morgana, "or it'll look suspicious. Everybody else who's come down with it says odd things in the middle of conversations, so try to work that in somehow. They also have bad dreams, but, well ... I think you've got those covered." Gwen pets Morgana's hair as she frowns into the mirror and asks, "You don't think there's anything evil, do you? About my dreams?"

Gwen's hand stills momentarily, then picks up its soothing motion again. "I think there are many things that we can't explain, and whether or not they're evil depends on the person who acts upon them. It looks very nice," she adds, touching the necklace and its elaborately-worked beads. "The King must have gotten them from that jeweller from Orkney who's all the fashion in the court now."

"Hmmm," Morgana says. There's something about that statement that seems off, but she's really too busy admiring herself in the mirror to think about it much.

...

That night the dreams come again, but they're different. Morgana sees Merlin shut up in a strange crystal cave, reeling in agony as his blood slowly freezes;

she sees a gold dragon poised over Uther's body, his heart clutched in one of its claws;

she sees Arthur dying near the shore of a dark hot lake, betrayal written all over his face;

she sees Camelot in ruin, that peculiar foreign knight Lancelot weeping at the edge of a broken and massive round stone table.

When Morgana wakes up and finds these dreams still bright and vivid in her mind, she goes deliberately to her dressing table, picks up a long decorative bodkin, and aims it straight for her left eye.

...

There's a bandage covering her brow when she swims up to consciousness and a long trail of pain across her forehead, so Morgana keeps her eyes closed. She can hear voices in her room; Gwen, worriedly telling Merlin and Arthur about Morgana's attempt to stab herself in the eye.

"So you mean it really is the madness?" Arthur asks, agitated. There's the sound of a smack and "Merlin, I thought you told me that was just something you and Gaius cooked up to get Morgana out of the dungeon!"

"It was, and keep your big ham hands to yourself," Merlin snaps. Morgana would laugh if her head didn't feel all explody. "There's something new here that's causing the madness, and it happened after we got Morgana out of the dungeon. Gwen, has there been any jewelry delivered? A necklace that Morgana wouldn't have worn before?"

"Of course," Gwen says. "The King gave it to Morgana himself, as an apology." Arthur nods. "There's a new jeweller from Orkney who's been commissioned to craft a full set of royal jewelry of state for my father, and he's apparently become quite popular among the court," he explains.

"All of the courtiers who've come down with the madness had acquired new necklaces shortly before," Merlin reveals with great and somewhat self-satisfied excitement. "I think there's something in them, something causing it."

"So we track down this Orkney jeweller-slash-sorcerer and make him cure them," Arthur says firmly. He pauses and adds, "Morgana isn't wearing the necklace now. She won't get better?"

They move closer to the bed; Morgana can feel them looming, inspecting her as she lies there seeing them all repeatedly die inside her fevered mind. Well, except Gwen, she's in a premonitioned nunnery or something instead of dead, but she's not happy about it. "No," Merlin says. "Whatever's on the necklaces stays in their systems once they've been worn for a couple of hours. Most of them were worn for much longer; I think the jeweller targeted vain people first because they'd be easiest."

"I can hear you," Morgana croaks. "I know," Merlin says. "Isn't that funny?"

...

In the end, they all go to find the jeweller together because it turns out he's disappeared from the castle without anybody actually seeing him leave, and Morgana assures the others that she's having directional visions that can help locate the villain. This is only half true; what Morgana is seeing mostly consists of a shadowy figure standing in some catacombs holding a bowl and chortling in a menacing fashion. Morgana can't believe Merlin was right on that one. But:

"There's some old burial catacombs under the barbican," Gwen tells them, "that hardly anyone knows about or goes into. They'd be the perfect place for the jeweller--"

"We shouldn't really be calling him 'the jeweller'," Merlin interrupts. "I mean, that'd be giving a bad name to all jewellers. Proper jewellers, not, erm, jewelorcerers. Majewellers?"

Arthur's face is slowly turning an astonishing beet colour and he pounds his fist on Morgana's dressing table and growls, "I can't believe a mere servant -- no offense, Gwen -- knows about these secret catacombs in Camelot and not me, the crown prince! This is unacceptable! And we shouldn't be standing around here wasting time anyway! Gwen, take us to these supposed catacombs so we can find this majeweller and fix his applecart!"

"Oh, we're going with majeweller, then. That's good. I like that one better too." Merlin looks pleased. Morgana briefly considers abandoning them all to whatever fate Chortles Majeweller has in store for them, but then remembers that it'll probably be her _own_ neck stretched for witchcraft if she manages to survive stabbing her own eyeballs out and keeps her mouth shut.

Gwen shepherds her mercilessly all the way to the burial catacombs as Arthur and Merlin bicker about the best possible plan to attack the bad guy (Arthur favours instant decapitation, while Merlin seems to think it's important to listen to an explanation first) and Morgana doesn't want to mention it, but she's getting these stabby pains in the back of her brain that are accompanied by the strong desire to hit the person nearest to her with an axe and then set Camelot on fire.

"Hey, Gwen," she mutters, tugging at Gwen's sleeve, "those other people, the ones who came down with the madness ... they're all being watched, right? Or safely contained somewhere?"

"Of course," Gwen assures her. "The Great Hall's been converted into a temporary sickroom so they can all be tended to at once. Watch your step here -- it's a little steep and kind of slippery." Morgana lets Gwen ootch her down the first stair of the wide, deep flight and presses, "but are they being guarded? Or it is just Gaius and a few random bodies who can hold a sponge and change a bed?"

"Um, there's probably guards," Gwen says in an offhand way, concentrating more on where Morgana is putting her feet -- and before Morgana realizes what's happening, she's reaching out to grab Gwen's shoulder, pulling her closer first and then pushing with all her might.

Gwen's eyes go wide and she does some of that comedy pinwheeling with her arms, which the spoiled princess side of Morgana enjoys even through the horror of what she's done; she hears Arthur shout and feels arms go around her waist to haul her back. Gwen slips from sight and Merlin darts forward with a sibilant, shivery whisper as Morgana wrestles with Arthur, who is well-muscled but lacks the ensorceled mean crazy that's driving Morgana at the moment. "I don't want to hurt you!" Arthur grunts, frustrated, and Morgana elbows him hard in the face and scrabbles up, running at top speed as soon as her feet gain enough purchase, back toward the castle and the Great Hall full of murderous courtiers. Arthur yells but doesn't come after her immediately because he'll have to check on Gwen and Merlin first. Morgana feels a lacerating pang of guilt about that, but while she's got this moment of clarity she needs to get this other thing done. She only hopes the staircase isn't as deep as it seemed ... and that she can keep her mind clear long enough.

Pinching herself savagely, Morgana shakes her throbbing head hard and keeps on running.

...

Gaius has a very special talent for making people feel as if they missed their calling as town idiot, and all with one combination expression of raised eyebrow plus pursed mouth. "They're suffering from madness," he says slowly and deliberately. "Naturally the first thing we'd do is make sure they're restrained so they can't hurt themselves or others. That's what you do. With madness." He directs his attention back to the raving lady he's treating, then pauses and turns back to Morgana to add, "I'm not quite sure we did the correct thing in not restraining _you_."

"I'm not sure either." Arthur skids to a halt next to Morgana, panting in a manly fashion and eyeing her warily. "She tried to kill Gwen!"

Morgana perks up at the 'tried to'. "So she's okay?" she asks hopefully, knotting her fingers together so they don't fly up of their own accord and wrap themselves around Arthur's throat.

"Yes," Arthur says, still sounding suspicious. "It was the damnedest thing ... I could have sworn she fell, but it turns out she managed to catch her balance at the very last second and fell forward onto the staircase instead of backward down to the bottom. Considering so much strange stuff happens around here, I've really never seen anything like it." He shakes his head, then points at Morgana and shouts, "And I wouldn't have, if you hadn't shoved Gwen like that! I'll grab her, Gaius, and you tie her down to a bed!"

 

"That may have to wait a moment, sire," Gaius says. The tone of his voice draws their attention, and they look across the room to see all of the courtiers wrenched around in their cots, staring at Arthur with glassy hatred in their eyes. "Destroy the Pendragon line!" one of them growls. "Down with the murderous Uther!" another screeches. "Burn Camelot to the ground!" somebody howls.

Arthur takes this all in and sighs. "They want my family dead -- it must be Sunday," he says glumly. Morgana pats his arm.

"Death to the King and ruin for the kingdom," she says. Her tone is sympathetic, so she hopes it might come off as comforting instead of a threat. Arthur's face says maybe not. Despite this, he takes her back to the catacombs with him, muttering something about being better able to keep an eye on her this way; that doesn't make much sense to Morgana, but she wants to go. She'll rank Arthur out for his nonsensical tactical decisions once this whole silly mess is all over.

...

They arrive just in time to join Gwen and Merlin in facing down a ginger-haired woman in a halter-necked gown. "The majeweller is a woman?" Arthur exclaims, aghast, and Gwen (whose palms and nose are scraped but otherwise looks just fine, Morgana is relieved to note) tightly explains, "It was all a glamour so she could get into the castle."

"They know me here! I was a tithe-paying citizen!" the majeweller shrieks, "but I was also--"

"A renowned magic user," Morgana finishes. The majeweller frowns.

"Yes, that," she says. "But then Uther--"

"Outlawed magic, and put one of your family members to death," Merlin supplies.

"Well, no -- my boyfriend. And I was about to break up with him. But that doesn't matter!" The majeweller claws dramatically at the air, moaning, "And so I--"

"Narrowly managed to escape the kingdom and went to Orkney to bide your time and plot revenge?" Gwen pipes up.

"Do you want to finish this speech for me?" the majeweller asks Arthur. He swings his sword about and concludes, "So now you've returned to take vengence on my family by sending our courtiers crazy and making them want to demolish Camelot."

The majeweller nods. "You'll pay for what you've done," she says sourly and somewhat flatly. She scratches the side of her neck and admits, "You know, this kind of loses its savour when I don't get to give my speech myself."

"Sorry," Gwen says. "It's just that you're not the first one we've had round here."

"I've experienced four myself, and I've only been here eight months!" Merlin says cheerily.

"May the Pendragon name fall into infamy and despair," Morgana adds, then removes herself to a corner so she doesn't lunge at Arthur. "I really don't know why you brought her back," Merlin observes, and Arthur rolls his eyes before cutting short any more banter by fulfilling his royal duty to engage the majeweller in combat.

...

He wins, of course -- it's what crown princes do -- and Merlin is able to identify a large ruby-headed pin stuck through the majeweller's elaborate crimped hairstyle as the cure for the madness. Arthur grabs it from him and sticks it into Morgana's thumb with what is really uncalled-for enthusiasm, and although she still feels rather like beating him about the head, it's down to normal levels and not homicidal ones.

"Thank goodness that worked," Gwen says, and Morgana wraps her maid up in her arms. "Can you ever forgive me?" she asks, already knowing that Gwen will, and kisses the bloody scratch on her pretty nose. Gwen smiles and chummily rubs Morgana's stomach. "Of course," she says, looking pleased and a little flushed. "Wasn't your fault you put on ensorceled jewelry. Given to you by the king, no less."

They turn back to the boys, arms still looped around each others' waists, and find Merlin and Arthur staring at them. Arthur clears his throat.

"Yes, we're all glad things turned out well," Arthur says. Morgana wonders if the odd note to his voice is due to the way Merlin seems to be unconsciously rubbing two knuckles against Arthur's hip, then dismisses the thought. People in Camelot aren't the most perceptive when it comes to ... well, anything, really. She loves this place. Arthur scowls and adds, "--but I'm not looking forward to telling my father about this."

"Perhaps he'll come up with a new law about magic," Merlin says. "Offer compensation to those families who lost a magic-user? Maybe not, you know, kill people who have loved ones with the ability to conjure up elaborate disguises or horrible monsters or terrible curses?"

"At the very least, he'll be glad that you solved the mad sickness," Gwen says more reasonably.

"I suppose," Arthur says, "although, come to think of it, I never even found out the majeweller's name." Merlin laughs and claps him on the shoulder, teasing, "Perhaps we're just not meant to be heroes after all!"

"Nobody ever thought _you_ were," Arthur tells him, and he and Merlin happily punch each other all the way back to the castle.

...

There's a new sleeping draught that night -- a thick, curdled-looking yellow concoction that Gwen sternly doles out in the proper doses -- and as Morgana settles down she can't help but feel a little afraid of what she's going to face in her dreams. She doesn't want to see Arthur dying or Merlin trapped again, and if she's honest with herself she doesn't even want to see Uther being killed. She's very much not wanting to see Gwen shut up in a convent, drifting wanly as her life drains away.

Her senses are in that drugged mid-state when she feels Gwen sit next to her, sinking down into the mattress to arrange Morgana's head in the curve of her waist. "Maybe the dreams won't come this time," she murmurs. "Maybe this potion will work."

"I keep seeing everybody dead or dying," Morgana says bleakly. Gwen automatically begins stroking her hair in long, fond, even motions. "Do you ever see what happens to you?" she asks, and Morgana frowns.

"... no," she finally admits. "I don't think I do."

Gwen settles further. "Good," she says with soothing certainty. "Seeing yourself in your dreams is bad luck. The rest of it likely isn't that bad." The feel of her hand in Morgana's hair is hypnotic and just before she drifts off to sleep, she resolves to talk to Gwen in the morning about sticking that pin into her silver beaded necklace to see if that will un-curse it and make it wearable. And perhaps looking into getting a halter-necked dress. It had looked quite fetching on the majeweller and after all, nobody need know that Morgana stole the fashion from an insane criminal. These are the sorts of things that a true lady of Camelot considers in order to rise to any occasion.

Smiling, Morgana floats into a deep and dreamless sleep.


End file.
